#musicmonday: Compilation of top #worship songs

I missed a few Mondays because I've been incredibly busy and forgot that I hadn't scheduled a Music Monday post in a while.

I'm currently working on building a top 40 list of worship songs for 215District, our youth & young adult group at church, and would like some of your input! Well, technically I wanted to do a top 25 list, but then there were way too many songs, and I already have 44 in the list, which I really need to cut down. Yeah, I will slash this eventually.

What are your favourite praise & worship songs? Are there any I should add to the list?
What songs work in your church, and which ones don't?

Let me know in the comments!

Commentary: Induction

At the end of a self-imposed hiatus, the question still begs to be asked: what are you in this for?

I find it's not a question for me alone, but for the whole team. Why are you here? Why do you commit your weekends, or pretend to anyway?

There seems to be a lack of structure, a lack of commitment and a lack of leadership. Or maybe it's too early for me to say, from one experience and one discussion. Maybe the way I see it - the way we see it - is not how they do. Maybe for them, it is commitment enough.

But the passion seems to be lacking when people who agreed to come at 9.15AM only turn up 9.45AM, and there is no time even for a quick sound check, a quick prayer, a short preparation. The passion seems to be lacking when people wander up to the stage as if there's nothing terribly important going on today. There is something terribly lacking when the worship leader does not turn up for his own 7.15PM prayer meeting.

Wake up!

YOU ARE THE WORSHIP TEAM.

YOU are the ministers that God has chosen to usher in His presence, to draw people to Him, to prepare their hearts before the Word can fall like seeds and be buried. You are the priests who minister to Him before the Holy of Holies.

How can the people enter prepared if you are not prepared? How can the people follow where they are not led?

How can you not feel the awesomeness of your responsibility before God that makes you tremble, that makes you prepare and consecrate yourselves? Even those outside perform their best, practice their best and offer their best, if only for human accolade and monetary reward.

What have you to say for yourselves when your simple act of worship becomes a stroll up to the stage to sing / play for the sake of it?

Or maybe I am too serious about this, hypocrite that I am.

Do not complain about the youth. They have learnt it from you.

So flame me. It may be time to burn.

Letting go

Sometimes you look at their youthful fervency and wonder, what happened to me? How did I wake up four-and-twenty and jaded? But there is fire in their spirits, and it's a thin line to walk between channeling that fire to God and breaking their wings before flight.
It's a balm to the soul, sometimes, when I do the little I can, and get thanked for nothing. It's like hey, maybe I really did do something right after all. Maybe it's just enough for them that I be there, no matter how useless I feel.
And there - that exposes again that stupid need in me to feel as if I have done something, accomplished something, when over and over again God says there is no need. It's been done! All you have to do now is to come and surrender.
Like I told him, echoing the wise words of leaders past, (was it Tryphena? I forget)

don't you think that as much as you care for the cf (or isca in this case) that God cares even more?

No? And so it comes down again to the issue of letting go.
Let go, let God. It's fast becoming an overused cliche.
But it isn't easy letting go of the past. In some way or other, who we are is really a culmination of who we used to be. Our present 'now' wouldn't be the same if we hadn't gone through some of those painful experiences in the past. Yet sometimes the hardest parts of our pasts to let go aren't really the painful ones. Those we sometimes step out of easily, remembering that all our sin and shame has been taken away, redeemed, by Christ on the cross.
The greatest bugbears to give up are often our successes. It's our remembrances of what it used to be like that keeps us worrying and fretting over the future of our 'pet' youth groups or cfs, taking a healthy sense of ownership one step over into possessiveness. That's where pride steps in, saying, if I were there, I would be able to help direct this. I wouldn't have made those stupid mistakes, tolerated those attitudes, allowed those things to happen.
And yet sometimes we need to remember that if our season for it has passed, we must move on and hand the reins to those in position. And though we sometimes wince and think but that's not how it should be, we should always keep in mind that these experiences too will shape them to become who God wants them to be.
It may mean that things might get messy, but God has never called us to be perfect has he?
He's called us to be real.